A Bicycle of Cathay Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A LITTLE ARMY HAD THROWN ITSELF UPON US."]

Now everybody wanted to know everything about the bear, and great was the hilarity which my account occasioned.

"Come in! Come in!" exclaimed Mr. Larramie. "The bear will be all right if you tied him well. You have just time to get ready for dinner." And noticing a glance I had given to my garments, he continued: "You need not bother about your clothes. We are all in field costume. Oh, I did not see you had a valise. Now, hurry in, all of you!"

That dinner was a most lively meal. Everybody seemed to be talking at once, yet they all found time to eat. The father talked so much that his daughter Edith took the carving-fork from him and served out the mutton-chops herself. The mother, from the other end of the table, with tears in her eyes, continually asked me if I would not have something or other, and how I could ever screw up my courage to go about with an absolutely strange bear.

There was a young man, apparently the oldest son, with a fine, frank manner and very broad shoulders. He was so wonderfully developed about the bust that he seemed almost deformed, his breast projecting so far that it gave him the appearance of being round-shouldered in front.

This, my practised eye told me, was the result of undue exercise in the direction of chest-expansion. He was a good-natured fellow, and overlooked my not answering several of his questions, owing to the evident want of opportunity to do so.

There was a yellow-haired girl with a long plait down her back; there was a half-grown boy, wearing a blue calico shirt with a red cravat; there was a small girl who sat by her mother; and there was a young lady, very upright and slender, who did not seem to belong to the family, for she never used the words "father" and "mother," which were continually in the mouths of the others. This young lady talked incessantly, and fired her words after the manner of a Gatling gun, without taking aim at anybody in particular. Sometimes she may have been talking to me, but, as she did not direct her gaze towards me on such occasions, I did not feel bound to consider any suppositions in regard to the matter.

I, of course, was the princ.i.p.al object of general attention. They wanted to know what I really thought of Billy Marshall as a scholar.

They wanted to know if I would have some more. They wanted to know if I had had any previous experience with bears. The father asked which I thought it would be easier to manage, a boy or a bear. The boy Percy wanted to know how I placed my feet when I stood up in front of a runaway horse. Others asked if I intended to go back to my school at Walford, and how I liked the village, and if I were president of the literary society there, which Mrs. Larramie thought I ought to be, on account of my scholastic position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'WOULD IT BE EASIER TO MANAGE A BOY OR A BEAR?'"]

But before the meal was over the bear had come to be the absorbing subject of conversation. I was asked my plans about him, and they were all disapproved.

"It would be of no use to take him to the Cheltenham," said Walter, the oldest son. "They couldn't keep him there. They have too many horses--a livery-stable. They wouldn't let you come on the place with him."

"Of course not," said Mr. Larramie. "And, besides, why should you take him there? It would be a poor place anyway. They wouldn't keep him until his owner turned up. They wouldn't have anything to do with him.

What you want to do is to bring your bear here. We have a hay-barn out in the fields. He could sleep in the hay, and we could give him a long chain so that he could have a nice range."

The younger members of the family were delighted with this suggestion. Nothing would please them better than to have a bear on the place. Each one of them was ready to take entire charge of it, and Percy declared that he would go into the woods and hunt for wild-bee honey with which to feed it. Even Mrs. Larramie a.s.sured me that if a bear were well chained, at a suitable distance, she would have no fears whatever of it.

I accepted the proposition, for I was glad to get rid of the animal in a way which would please so many people, and after dinner was over, and I had smoked a cigar with my host and his son Walter, I said that it was time for me to go and get the bear.

"But you won't go by the main road," said Mr. Larramie. "That makes a great curve below here to avoid a hill. If I understood you properly, you left the bear not far from a small house inhabited by three women?"

"They're the McKenna sisters," added Walter.

"Yes," said the father, "and their house is not more than two miles from here by a field road. I will go with you."

I exclaimed that I would not put him to so much trouble, but my words were useless. The Walter son declared that he would go also, that he would like the walk; the Percy son declared he was going if anybody went; and Genevieve, the girl with the yellow plait, said that she wished she were a boy so that she could go too, and she wished she could go anyway, boy or no boy, and as her father said that there was no earthly reason why she should not go, she ran for her hat.

Miss Edith looked as if she would like to go, but she did not say so; and, as for me, I agreed to every proposition. It would certainly be great fun to do things with this lively household.

We started off without the boy, but it was not long before he came running after us, and to my horror I perceived that he carried a rifle.

"What are you going to do with that, Percy?" exclaimed his father.

"I don't expect to do anything with it," the boy replied, "but I thought it would be a good thing to bring it along--especially as Genevieve is with us. n.o.body knows what might happen."

"That's true," exclaimed Walter, "and the fact that Genevieve is along is the best reason in the world for your not bringing a gun. You better go take it back."

To this Percy strongly objected. He was going out on a sort of a bear-hunt, and to him half the pleasure would be lost if he did not carry a gun. I am not a coward, but a boy with a gun is a terror to me. My expression may have intimated my state of mind, for Mr.

Larramie said to me that we had now gone so far that it would be a pity to send Percy back, and that he did not think there would be any danger, for his boy had been taught how to carry a gun properly.

"We are all out-of-door people and sportsmen," he said, "and we begin early. But I suppose what you are thinking about is the danger of some of us ending soon. But we need not be afraid of that. Walk in front, Percy, and keep the barrel pointed downward."

When we came in sight of the house of the three McKennas, Walter proposed that we make a detour towards the woods. "For," said he, "if those good women see a party like this with a gun among them, they will be sure to think it is a case of escaped criminal, or something of that kind, and be frightened out of their wits."

We skirted the edge of the trees until we came to the opening of the wood road, which I recognized immediately, and, asking Percy and the others to keep back, I went on by myself.

"I don't think people would frighten that sort of a bear," I heard Genevieve say. "He must be used to crowds around him when he's dancing."

I presently reached the place where I had turned from the road. It was a natural break in the woods. There was the tree to which I had tied the bear, but there was no bear.

I stood aghast, and in a moment the rest of the party were cl.u.s.tered around me. "Is this where you left him?" they cried. "And is he gone?

Are you sure this is the place?"

Yes, I was sure of it. I have an excellent eye for locality, and I knew that I had chained the bear to the small oak in front of me. At that moment there was a scream from Genevieve. "Look! Look!" she cried. "There he is, just ready to spring!"

We all looked up, and, sure enough, on the lower branch of the oak, half enveloped in foliage, we saw the bear extended at full length and blinking down at us. I gave a shout of delight.

"Now, keep back, all of you!" I cried. "Bears don't spring from trees, but it will be better for you to be out of the way while I try to get him down."

I walked up to the oak-tree, and then I found that the bear was still firmly attached to it. His chain had been fastened loosely around the trunk; he had climbed up to the branch and pulled the chain with him.

I now called upon Orso to come down, but apparently he did not understand English, and lay quietly upon the branch, his head towards the trunk of the tree. I extended my hand up towards the chain, and found that I could nearly reach it. "Shall I give you a lift?" cried Walter, and I accepted the offer. It was a hard piece of work for him, but he was a professed athlete, and he would have lifted me if it had cracked his spine. I reached up and unhooked the chain. It was then long enough for me to stand on the ground and hold the end of it.

Now I began to pull. "Come down!" I said. "Come down, Orso!" But Orso did not move.

"Bears don't come down head-foremost," cried Percy; "they turn around and come down backwards. You ought to have a chain to his tail if you want to pull him down."

"He hasn't got any tail!" exclaimed Genevieve.

I was in a quandary. I might as well try to break the branch as to pull the bear down. "If we had only thought of bringing a bucket of meat!" cried Percy.

"Would you mind holding the chain," I said to Walter, "while I try to drive him down?" Of course the developed young man was not afraid to do anything I was not afraid to do, and he took the chain. There was a pine-tree growing near the oak, and, mounting into this, I found that with a long stick which Mr. Larramie handed me I could just reach the bear. "Go down!" I said, tapping him on the haunches, but he did not move.

"Can't you speak to him in Italian?" said Genevieve. "Tame bears know Italian. Doesn't anybody know the Italian for 'Come down out of a tree?'" But such knowledge was absent from the party.

"Try him in Latin," cried Percy. "That must be a good deal like Italian, anyway."

To this suggestion Mr. Larramie made no answer; he had left college before any of the party present had been born; Mr. Walter looked a little confused; he had graduated several years before, and his cla.s.sics were rusty. I felt that my pedagogical position made it inc.u.mbent upon me to take immediate action, but for the life of me I could not think of an appropriate phrase.

"Give him high English!" cried Mr. Larramie. "That's often cla.s.sic enough! Tell him to descend!"

"Orso, descend!" I cried, giving a little foreign tw.a.n.g to the words.

Immediately the bear began to twist like a caterpillar upon the limb, he extended his hind-legs towards the trunk, he seized it with his fore-paws. He began slowly to move downward.

"Hurrah!" cried Percy, "that hit him like a rifle-ball! Hurrah for high English! That's good enough for me!"

"Look at his hind hands!" cried Genevieve. "He has worn all the hair off his palms!"

I hurried from the tree and reached the ground before the bear. Then taking the end of the chain, I advised the others to move out of the woods while I followed with the bear. They all obeyed except Genevieve, who wanted very much to linger behind and help me lead him.